In my eternal optimism, it is easy to think that everything is okay, that everyone wants peace and tolerance as much as I do. As a rabbi and as a human being, I believe strongly in the value of Tikkun Olam, the repairing of the broken world around us. We are all responsible for making this world a better place, and for helping people strive to be GOOD.

And yet, yesterday's tragic events remind us all to be mindful of the darker side that is ever-present.There are those who are dedicated to hate, to brokenness, to destruction. Here was a presumably lone gunman who was "well-known to the authorities," a man who has served time in prison for domestic terrorism before, yet he was allowed to have a gun and perpetuate hate. He has published unbelievably disgusting books that were both racist and anti-Semitic.

As a rabbi, I always aim for a nechemta, a word of comfort at the end of a teaching. For me, I must turn to a quote from the Holocaust Museum's website, a quote that reminds me that we are all mandated to work for peace:

"On January 27, 1998, Yehuda Bauer, professor of Holocaust studies at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, delivered a speech to the German Bundestag in which he said 'I come from a people who gave the Ten Commandments to the world. Time has come to strengthen them by three additional ones, which we ought to adopt and commit ourselves to: thou shall not be a perpetrator; thou shall not be a victim; and thou shall never, but never, be a bystander.'"